Special Edition: Substack SitRep 6 Sept 2023
My 100th post so you get 100 links!
This is my 100th post on Substack so you’re getting 100 brain-exploding links.
I hope to have subscribers who understand that the world is bigger than us, especially bigger than the sociopathy of American celebrity, politics, and banking. To my American readers who fight insanity without insanity, thank you! To my fellow South Africans watching our country bleed, vasbyt!
Please bookmark this fascinating marathon and explore over the next week. I’ve scheduled a few posts but will mostly be quiet whilst I research my article on Zelensky.
I’m appreciative of the 26,000 views the past month, but 12 hours a day for 7 days a week for 2 months has been exhausting. After 2 and a half hours sleep, here I am again. I need to finish getting better after nose and chest hell during the same period. No wheat, dairy and spices has helped but still spitting blood when waking.
It’s Spring in South African. A monkey did its best politician imitation yesterday and stole the last banana from the kitchen. Chirping birds are happily clueless when I mention Ukraine. Sunshine keeps telling me, “Fuck the internet. Try walking instead of typing.”
Besides, I have the feeling that current events will create a maelstrom before this year finishes. It’s best to learn how to breathe now.
HOT QUOTES
1. “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.” - from ‘22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight’
2. “War is an evangelist, bearing tidings for us
The warrior escaped unscathed
while those in their homes were killed
Yes, it is God's will but, maybe,
if everyone had been a fighter, they would have been saved.”
- from Gaza's calligraffiti of hope (and towards my hope of more global activists)
THE BEST ‘OLD’ ARTICLE YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
3. Tessa Fights Robots – The Great Reset for Dummies
LONGFORM ARTICLE BRILLIANCE
4. Howard Buffet’s oligarchic playground in small-town America
5. It's effective. It's popular. It's brutal.
6. Shadow on the sun (that’s not a Smashmouth song)
HEALTH (AND COVID)
7. Roundup: Covid regime and war
8. US Open tennis players “fall by the wayside” as COVID-19 surges
9. Donating to a good cause (how billionaires ran the world)
10. State of modern medicine, how we’ve been duped
11. Pandemic Pandemonium: Science and civic accountability
12. Vaccine efficacy 'cheap trick' by exclusion
13. Fauci just admitted masks don’t work…but why?
14. “I no longer trust authority” - Dr John Campbell on Moderna, Myocarditis & mRNA
SOMETHING ELSE
16. Wemyss
17. Revolt of the Cockroach People?
18. Return of the Soviet Cashier
20. Intoxicating allure of nostalgia
21. I overhyped climate change to get my paper published
22. Goodreads is terrible for books, so why can’t we quit it?
THE HOT WAR
24. American grand strategy, realism, and the Russo-Ukraine War
25. Occupation of Russia by the USA in 1918-1920
26. Ukraine has penetrated Russia’s first defensive belt (what happens now?)
27. Hotel Ukraine: ‘Sure, check-out any time, but you can never leave’
28. The fog of war brought down to earth
29. Germany: "No war is our war!"
30. Poland & Ukraine can reset troubled ties by cooperating on draft dodgers
31. Putin and Erdogan meet at Sochi
32. Romania debunked Kiev’s latest lie aimed at escalating war
33. A Skeptics war news aggregator
34. Belarus handled recent border incident with Poland in the best way possible
THE COLD WAR
35. Son of slain journalist who exposed web of CIA corruption calling for new murder investigation
36. Costs and benefits of banning The Strategic Culture Foundation
37. Who’s afraid of an alternative for Germany?
38. Russian companies build up $200bn secret slush fund despite the oil sanctions
39. Vanuatu to elect new prime minister amid crisis over Australia pact
40. Why would North Korea’s Kim and Russia’s Putin want to meet?
THE BLACK SEA
42. Romania-Moldova reunification: Three scenarios
43. Four Armenian soldiers killed after shelling by Azerbaijan: Yerevan
44. Nagorno-Karabakh president quits as breakaway territory's crisis deepens
45. Russia to become world’s largest trade partner of Turkey
46. Torrential downpour across Greece and Bulgaria triggers flash floods
EUROPE
47. The Telegraph sale: The UAE bid is a risk to press freedom (remember when I wrote ‘Terrorgraph’?)
48. In Bosnia, a perfidious legal attack is being staged to implode the Dayton Peace Agreement
49. UK apologises to Matthew Hedges after watchdog finds Foreign Office 'ignored' signs of UAE torture
50. Riots erupt in Sweden after another Quran-burning protest
USA
51. Ashes will come first - I pledge allegiance to no political party on the face of the Earth
52. Vivek Ramaswamy is just another disgusting warmonger
53. Creative destruction: “The Fourth Turning is here”
54. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
56. More banks to fail? Not in North Dakota
57. How America ended its last Central Bank
58. Access journalism at its most pernicious
59. Elon Musk considers banning Anti-Defamation League from X
60. Oppenheimer soars past $850mn at global box office. $1bn on the cards?
SOUTH AMERICA
61. Widespread rejection of far-right event in Buenos Aires denying crimes of dictatorship
62. The dark truth of Mexico's "Pimp City" that traffics girls to New York
63. How I stumbled into a human smuggling operation in Colombia
64. Venezuelan opposition remains as treacherous and elitist as ever
65. Venezuela: Oil production recovery continues
66. Brazil and India deepen military cooperation
67. Ecuadorean guards released
AFRICA
68. What are governments for? Lessons from Ancient Mesopotamia
69. Why South Africa’s worst blackouts are back, and why there may be worse to come
70. How to break the cycle of African coups
71. Gabon coup leader takes presidential oath and promises ‘free’ elections
72. Feeding big agribusiness, starving Africans
73. Niger’s junta supported by Pentagon, Washington’s objective: “Remove France from Africa”
ASIA
74. U.S. hostility towards China and American exceptionalism
75. Why are Indonesians illegally selling their kidneys?
76. How sanctions failed to hinder China's development
77. Huawei's new phone processor unveiled, signaling China's chip breakthrough
78. How ERNIE, China's ChatGPT, cracks under pressure
79. Five China stories you need to read
81. The challenge of reengaging with Hong Kong
82. US, Indonesia hold military drills in Java
EVERYWHERE ELSE
83. Attorney seeks second dismissal in Icelandic domestic terrorism case
84. Iceland is fabricating a migrant crisis
85. Yemeni government criticizes World Food Programme’s decision to cut humanitarian aid to the country
86. Berlin-based Palestinian singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Rasha Nahas
PODCASTS
87. Radiolab - The Internet Dilemma
88. Dennis Marburger on Azerbaijan's evil dictator
89. Sam Harris - Sanity check on climate change
MEANINGFUL MUSIC
90.
WAKE UP!
91.
VIDEO NEWS
92.
93.
94.
95.
SHORT DOCUMENTARIES
96.
97.
98.
VIDEO INTERVIEWS
99.
100.
Be well!